1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the design and manufacturing of piping and plumbing systems, and more particularly to a system and method for designing and manufacturing systems including bent tubing. Even more particularly the present invention relates to a system and method for entering a bent-tube object in a CAD drawing file, and for using the bent-tube object to generate data for driving a tube bender to manufacture a bent tube.
2. Description of the Background Art
Computer assisted design (CAD) systems are well known and widely used in the design of mechanical devices, architectural structures, landscaping, and the like. Known systems (e.g., AutoCAD) allow the designer to enter objects into an electronic drawing file in order to “draw” the device, structure, etc. being designed.
While some CAD programs appear quite complex, and offer the designer a great variety of drawing tools, such programs are essentially only drawing engines. The objects in the drawing files are only arcs, circles, lines, etc. While the arcs, circles, and lines can be grouped to provide the appearance of an object (e.g., a 90° pipe elbow), the object is still only a group of arcs, circles, lines, etc. The CAD program does not recognize the object as an entity having any real physical characteristics (e.g., material type, function, etc.).
Plug-in programs have been developed to work with CAD systems to provide additional information about an object in a drawing file. For example, a plug-in program might provide a list of objects that can be entered into a drawing file. Objects provided by plug-in applications typically include data (e.g., material type, end connection conditions, pressure ratings, etc.) in addition to the drawing data, which can be selectively retrieved by the designer.
Known plug-in applications are limited to standard objects that are used repeatedly in systems being designed. For example, components such as elbows, tees, valves, etc. are used repeatedly in various systems without any change to the component itself. Further, such components are typically available as a commodity from suppliers. It is, therefore, efficient to provide such standard objects in a plug-in application.
Some objects, however, necessarily vary from one design to the next. It is not, therefore, efficient to spend the resources necessary to offer such custom objects in a plug-in application, because a custom object designed for one system might never be used in another system.
Bent tubes/pipes are an example of objects not previously offered in plug-in applications. The dimensions and parameters of a bent tube are highly dependent on the specific architecture of an individual project. The number and angle of bends formed in the tube are generally dictated by the physical layout of the project, which varies on a case-by-case basis. Thus, bent tubes are custom objects that are not offered in prior art plug-in applications.
Further, bent tubes for each project or even each piece must be custom made on the fly. The manufacture of such bent tubes requires a user to manually input data into a controller that in turn drives a tube bender to form the bent tube. The operator is required to glean the required information (e.g., bent-tube dimensions) from an engineering drawing printout, modify and/or augment the information based on the type of bender being used, and manually input the data into the controller. This process is very time consuming, and is highly susceptible to operator error.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that allows a designer to enter a custom bent-tube object in an electronic drawing file. What is also needed is a system and method to include bender driver data in a custom bent-tube object. What is also needed is a system and method for automatically extracting and/or using information from the bent-tube object to drive a tube bender.